Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s22.1

c9.s22.1

The soil was fertile and the greater part of it was under irrigation and bore two crops in the year both of fruit and grain. Rice, millet and sesamum were sown in summer; wheat, barley and pulse, in winter. Aristobulus noted that rice stood in water-logged fields and was sown in beds. Megasthenes traces the superior stature and the proud bearing of the people to the abundant means of subsistence at their command; he says that famine and scarcity were unknown in India. Sugar-cane is described as a reed yielding honey without bees, and the cotton plant continues to attract attention, Nearchus recording that fine webs were made from tree wool which was also used in a raw state by the Macedonians for stuffing mattresses and the padding of saddles.² Strabo preserves a description of the banyan tree by Onesicritus which is worth reproducing : ‘there are some large trees from which branches grow out to the length even of twelve cubits. These branches then grow downwards as if they had been bent until they touch the ground. They next penetrate into the soil and take root like shoots that have been planted. Then they spring upwards and form a trunk, whence again, in the manner described, branches bend themselves downward and plant the ground with one layer after another, and so on in this order, so that from a single tree there is formed a long shady canopy like a tent supported by numerous pillars.’ As regards the size of the trees, he states that ‘their trunks could scarcely be clasped by five men’. Aristobulus stated that the shade of a single tree could shelter fifty horsemen from the noon tide heat, while Onesicritus put the number at four hundred; Nearchus said that even ten thousand men could rest under the shade of a single tree.³ Many medicinal plants and roots, both salutary and noxious, were grown in India, and plants which yielded a great variety of dyes; Aristobulus noted that under the law any person who discovered a deadly substance without announcing its antidote at the same time rendered himself liable to the penalty of death, but one who discovered both got a reward from the king. India, like Arabia and Ethiopia, produced cinnamon, spikenard and other aromatics.¹